Blood Safari

12

Wolhuter raised a bony hand and slowly rubbed his goatee. Then his face eroded into a wary smile. ‘Emma,’ he said, with respect.

‘That’s right.’

‘You’re going to need that attitude. You have no idea what a wasp’s nest you’re sticking your head into.’

‘That’s what Inspector Jack Phatudi said too.’

Wolhuter gave Branca a meaningful look. Then he asked Emma, ‘When did you speak to him?’

‘This morning.’

‘What do you know about him?’

‘Nothing.’

Frank Wolhuter shifted his body forward and leaned his forearms on the desk. ‘Emma, I like you. But I see from your card that you are from Cape Town. This is another world from Cape Town. You won’t like me saying it, but let me tell you that Capetonians do not live in Africa. I know. Every year I go to Cape Town and it’s like visiting Europe.’

‘What has all this to do with Jacobus?’

‘I’ll get to that. First, let me paint you a picture of Limpopo, of the Lowveld, so you can understand the whole thing. This is still the old South Africa. No, that’s not entirely true. The mindset of everyone, black and white, is in the old regime, but all the problems are New South Africa. And that makes for an ugly combination. Racism and progress, hate and cooperation, suspicion and reconciliation … those things do not lie well together. And then there’s the money and the poverty, the greed.’

He picked up his pipe again, but did nothing with it.

‘You have no idea what’s going on here. Let me tell you about Inspector Jack Phatudi. He is from the Sibashwa tribe, important man, nephew to the chief. And by a mere coincidence the Sibashwa are in the middle of a big land claim. The acreage they want is part of the Kruger Park. And the Sibashwa are no great fans of Cobie de Villiers. Because Cobie is what some would call an activist. Not your usual greeny, your typical bunny-hugger. No. He doesn’t do protest marches or shout from a podium. He’s undercover, he’s quiet, he’s here and he’s there and you never see him. But he’s relentless, never gives up, never stops. He’ll listen, and he’ll eavesdrop, and he’ll take his pictures and make notes – and before you know it he knows everything. He’s the one with the evidence that the Sibashwa have already signed an agreement with a property developer. We’re talking hundreds of millions. So Cobie went and gave this information to the National Parks people and their lawyers, because he believed that if the Sibashwa’s land claim succeeded it would be the beginning of the end for Kruger. You can’t build a bunch of houses and think it’ll have no impact. You can’t …’

He cut himself short. ‘Don’t let me preach to you. The fact of the matter is, the Sibashwa don’t like Cobie. Even before this vulture affair he’s had trouble with them. Gin traps for leopards and wire snares for buck and their dogs forever running around and causing havoc. They know that it’s Cobie that reports them to the authorities, Cobie that shoots their dogs. They know him. They know what he’s like. That’s why they poisoned those vultures, because they knew someone would phone Cobie. It was an ambush. They wanted Cobie there so it would look as though he had shot those people, the sangoma and the poisoners. But it wasn’t Cobie. He couldn’t. He can’t kill anything.’

‘I know,’ said Emma, with feeling. ‘Then why is he hiding?’ The right question to ask.

‘The sangoma who was shot is Sibashwa. But they wanted him out of the way, because he was just as opposed to the development. He wasn’t stupid. He knew everything would change the minute the big money began to flow. It would be the end of their way of life, their culture and traditions. So how do you solve the problem? You get rid of Cobie and the sangoma, two birds with one stone. Why do you think all the witnesses to the shooting are Sibashwa?’

‘It’s all too convenient,’ said Branca.

‘Exactly,’ said Wolhuter. ‘How objective will Inspector Jack Phatudi be in his investigation? Assuming he’s not part of the whole thing in the first place. And why did they break into Cobie’s room the night before last? Why didn’t Jack Phatudi run up here with a search warrant? Because they’re looking for the copy of the developer’s contract. They want Cobie’s photographs and diaries, all his evidence. Not for the courts. They want it to disappear. Just like they want Cobie to disappear. They want to take Cobie out with a ridiculous accusation, and if they get that right, Donnie and I are next in line; because we oppose the claim and we know about the development. This land claims mess …’

He angrily picked up his matches as his voice rose.

‘Frank …’ said Branca soothingly as though he knew what to expect.

‘No, Donnie, I won’t keep quiet.’ He struck a match, sucked angrily on the pipe and looked at Emma through the smoke.

‘Do you know how many there are that want a piece of Kruger? Nearly forty. Forty bloody land claims against the game reserve. What for? So they can destroy that, too? Just go and see what the blacks have done with the farms they got here in the Lowveld. With their land claims. I’m not a racist, I’m talking facts. Go and have a look at what it looks like. It was prime land; successful, productive white farmers had to get off, and now it’s a wasteland, the people are dying of hunger. Everything is broken – the borehole pumps, the irrigation pipes, the tractors, the pick-ups, and all that money the government put in, gone. Wasted. And what do they do? They say “give us more” and they do nothing and half of them have moved back to where they lived before the whole thing started.’

His pipe had gone out. He struck another match, but it never reached the pipe. ‘These are the same people that want a piece of Kruger, because their great-great-grandfather had three cows that grazed there in seventeen-something. Give it to them and see what happens. Chop up the park in forty bits of tribal land and that’s the end, I’m telling you, we can all pack our bags and move to Australia, there’ll be nothing left here anyway.’

He leaned back in his chair. ‘And it’s not just the blacks. Greed has no colour.’

He jabbed his pipe stem at me. ‘That’s why I get edgy when a man comes in here and says he’s a builder. There are a lot of them sneaking around here. White guys. Skinny little city slickers in collar and tie, with dollars signs in their eyes and “Development” on their business cards. They feel nothing for conservation. They haven’t come to uplift the disadvantaged. They come here and seduce the people. They create these visions of pots of gold at the end of the land claim rainbow. The people are so poor, they want to believe in it, they are blinded.’

‘Golf estates,’ said Donnie Branca in great distaste.

‘Picture that,’ Frank Wolhuter said, his deep voice passionate again. ‘Go and look at the Garden Route. See what the golf estates have done there. All under the banner of conservation. Show me one thing they have conserved there. Trashed, yes. Wasted. They use more water per hectare than any other kind of development in the world, and now I hear they are going to develop golf estates in the Little Karoo, because there’s no more land left on the coast. With what water, I ask you? The only water is underground and that is a finite resource, but develop they will, because the money calls. And here? A golf estate in the Kruger Park? Can you picture that? Can you see how it would ruin the fauna and flora and the water resources, here where we have a terrible drought every other year?’

‘What will be left for our children?’ Branca asked.

‘Nothing,’ said Wolhuter. ‘Except eighteen holes and a few impala beside the eighteenth green.’

Then they fell silent and the sounds of the animals in the pens filtered through the curtains like an approving audience.

Emma le Roux stared at the opposite wall for a long time before taking her ID book and putting it away in her bag. She left the visiting card on the desk. ‘Where is Jacobus now?’ she asked.

Wolhuter’s anger was spent, his voice calm.

‘I can’t tell you.’

‘Can you give him a message?’

‘No, I mean I don’t know where he is. Nobody knows where he is.’

‘Maybe he’s gone back to Swaziland,’ said Donnie Branca.

‘Oh?’

‘That’s where he comes from,’ said Wolhuter. ‘Are you from Swaziland too?’

‘No,’ said Emma.

Wolhuter raised his hands in a gesture that said ‘there you are, then’.

‘How long have you known Jacobus?’

‘Let’s see now … Five … no, six years.’

‘And are you sure he’s definitely from Swaziland?’

‘That’s what he said.’

‘Does he still have relations there?’

Wolhuter sank back into the chair. ‘Not that I know of. I sort of had the impression that he was an orphan. Donnie? Did he ever speak of his people?’

‘I don’t know. You know Cobie. Not a great talker.’

‘Where in Swaziland?’

Wolhuter shook his head. ‘Emma, you have to understand. We don’t ask people for their CVs when they come and work here. Most of them are temporary. There’s always an oversupply of volunteers. They do the tour and get all bright eyed, especially the young people and the tourists. It’s a peculiar thing; I think the churches see a lot of it. From the start I say board and lodging is on the house, but no pay. You work for the cause and we see how it goes. We need the extra hands, but they don’t last. Two months or so of sweeping bird shit out of the cages and dragging stinking carcasses out to the vulture restaurant and their eyes stop shining, the excuses begin and they move on. But not Cobie. He was here three, four days and I knew he would stay.’

‘Did you ask for a CV?’

‘For a job that pays nothing?’

‘Did he work for six years without salary?’

Wolhuter laughed. ‘Of course not. By the time we put him on the payroll, I knew him. A man’s character tells you more than a CV.’

‘Where was he before he started work here?’

‘He worked for a man near the Swazi border. Heuningrand.’

‘Heuningklip,’ said Branca. ‘Stefan Moller’s. Stef. Multimillionaire, but he does fantastic work.’

‘What sort of work?’

Wolhuter looked at Branca. ‘You know more than I do, Donnie.’

Branca shrugged. ‘There was this article in Africa Geographic… about Moller buying three or four farms beside the Songimvelo Game Reserve. Abused land, overgrazed, overcropped, eroded, scrap lying around. Moller put a lot of money in to fix it. He called it “healing the land”, or something like that. It’s a private game reserve now.’

‘Jacobus helped with that?’

‘So far as I could tell.’ Branca shrugged again. ‘Cobie’s a broad-strokes kind of guy. He just said he was there.’

‘What else did he say?’

After an uncomfortable silence it was Wolhuter who tried to explain. ‘Emma, I don’t know how you do things in Cape Town, but here we respect a man’s right to keep his business to himself. Or not. Donnie and I are different. We’re talkers. Sometimes I get sick of hearing my own stories. I was a game warden for Natal Parks Board all my life, and if you would come and sit by the fire with me tonight I would tell you stories until the sun came up. Donnie’s people are from Portuguese Mozambique, and that’s an interesting history. Donnie tells it beautifully. But Cobie’s different. He’ll sit there and if I’m telling stories about animals he’ll soak up every word. Then he asks questions about it, non-stop, to the point of rudeness. Like he wants to suck you dry, hear everything, learn everything. When we talk about other things he switches off, just gets up and goes. He’s just not interested. It took me a long time to get used to that. We all tell stories about ourselves – most of us. It’s how we tell the world who we are, or who we would like to be. But not Cobie. He doesn’t really care how people see him, or don’t see him. He lives in a narrow world … one-dimensional… and people are not part of that dimension.’

‘Cobie doesn’t like the concept of people,’ said Branca.

Emma waited for him to explain.

‘He calls humanity the greatest plague the planet has ever known. He says there are too many people, but that’s not the real problem. He says that if a man must choose between wealth and conservation, wealth will always win. We will always over-exploit, we will never be cured.’

‘That’s why we know so little about Cobie. I can tell you he grew up somewhere in Swaziland; I think his father was a farmer, because now and then he mentions a farm. I know he only has Matric. And he worked for Stef Moller before he came here. That’s all I know of his history.’

‘And there was a girlfriend,’ Branca said.

That made Emma sit up. ‘A girlfriend? Where?’

‘When he worked at Stef s. He said something once …’

‘How do I get to Stef Moller’s?’